Review: The Story of Stuff

I just read The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard. We normally only review fiction as well as books on the craft of writing. But I read a lot of non-fiction as research for my Terran Shift universe, especially books I expect will help refine my vision of the future. The Story of Stuff is, by far, the most important book I've read in a long time. It's also the most depressing.

Tons o' Stuff

The Story of Stuff is about all the Stuff we have in our society: cell phones, iPads, computers, books, toys, t-shirts, shower curtains, and all the other things we buy. The book charts the progress of that Stuff from ore extraction to product creation to garbage dumps. Many pages discuss the over-consuming society we live in (assuming you are in a first-world country like me) and how our current unsustainable lifestyle is destroying the planet, our communities, and ourselves.

The Story of Stuff paints a sad picture of today's world. Eliminating hunger and malnutrition in the world would have cost $19 billion in 2003. In that same year, people in Europe and the United States spent $17 billion on pet food. Also in that year, people spent $14 billion on cruises, while a mere $10 billion would have given every person on the planet a year's worth of clean water.

Our Toxic Earth

That "new plastic shower curtain" smell my brother and I both admit to liking is actually toxic cancer-inducing chemicals out-gassing. Ditto for that enticing "new car smell." The abundance of chemicals we dump into the environment as we create our Stuff is staggering. The mixture of chemicals we invite into our homes (from those shower curtains to infant toys and beyond) is disgusting. Ms. Leonard's story about the toxic ash being dumped on a Haitian beach was shocking. Our media doesn't tell us stories like this. We're too insulated from reality. I can't possibly reprint all the facts from The Story of Stuff here, but almost every page contained at least one despair-inducing fact, including this gem:

Toxic chemicals have been found in breast milk. These are chemicals linked to several neurological disorders and development problems. And, oddly enough, breast milk is still safer and better for your baby than the alternatives. How did this happen? The average woman in the US uses a dozen personal care products a day, containing 168 chemical ingredients, most of which are not actually regulated and many of which have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems, and disruption of hormones. And those chemicals pass from your body to your baby's.

Engineered to Fail

I've complained loudly, on several occasions, about products I purchased that were obviously engineered to fail - like that old DVD player with a 90-day warranty that stopped working on Day 91. Things like that are planned as part of the Stuff cycle - to force us to be good little consumers and buy replacements. Ever notice how all your fancy gadgets cannot be easily repaired? You can't even replace the battery in your iPod without minor surgery. "Upgrading" now means throwing the old one into the garbage can and buying a new one. Prices have been pushed so low that it's always cheaper to buy replacements than to have anything repaired. When my $250 printer runs out of toner, it will cost me $350 to replace the toner cartridges, and that's if I can even find someone to sell them to me. All planned as part of our consumerist culture.

Going Green

All these stories are linked if you follow the path of The Story of Stuff. This book is important. You need to read this book. It's eye-opening, often depressing, and simply outrageous. This book pissed me off (but in a good way). The saddest thing of all is that I know, as Ms. Leonard knows, that a few lifestyle changes I make to be "greener" won't matter much in the grand scheme. In fact, I think many of the solutions presented in the book are doomed to fail. Not for lack of intention, but simply because people are very attached to their Stuff and to their lifestyles. Many of the solutions come across as hippie lifestyle changes from the 60s. Granted, I believe these kinds of approaches are needed, and many of them coincide with my desire to live in a much smaller community, but I don't see the majority of people in the United States agreeing to them. We've had too many years of not trusting each other, not talking to our neighbors, just existing in our personal cocoons. I certainly don't see the corporations that benefit from this Stuff cycle relinquishing their control, or their money. While reading this book, I kept thinking of Tool's song Aenima: "The only way to fix it is to flush it all away."

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if everyone who reads this review reads this book, watches the movie version, and talks about it... then maybe we can have a chance to save this planet (and ourselves!). Give it a shot. Turn off the TV, go to your local library or bookstore, and grab a copy of The Story of Stuff today.

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Organize your writing in Scrivener

I found a tidy little summary about keeping yourself organized with Scrivener over on MacWorld.com. It talks about reorganizing your work, "Files in the Binder can be chapters, sections, scenes, beats, or whatever you want. This is one of the important aspects of Scrivener, one which helps free you from the fetters of linear composition." And probably one of the most powerful features, the "Scrivenings" view mode. It lets you combine and edit multiple documents as if it were one big document. Among other things.

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Yes, I Write

I had a quick trip to Massachusets this weekend, which means a lot of driving for one day. So I didn’t want to do much when I got home. And it’s been a while since I’ve cleared my to-read list on my Google Reader, so I went back in to see how bad my “unreads” had gotten. Let me tell you, it was pretty bad.

But one of Nathan Bransford’s headlines caught me, and I actually read the whole thing. It was a guest blog asking the question “Do you tell people you write?”

This is actually something I’ve heard many other writers and authors talk about, with mixed answers. Everyone has their own reasons about the response they give.

I’ve heard a lot of romance and fantasy/sci-fi/horror writers give the excuse that they don’t want their fellow church goers to know about it because they’ll think it’s a weird hobby (there are quite a few who don’t keep mum too, mind you). I’ve heard others say it makes them look like underachievers or something like that, because it’s not a “useful” profession, and that’s why they keep it quiet.

Me, I certainly tell people I’m a writer—when it’s appropriate. That means when I meet new people in social situations; not, let’s say, at work in idle conversation before a meeting at my office job. But I will say that most of the people I work with, who know me, know I am a writer and cannot wait to buy my books.

I think the biggest reason I don’t hide my writing is that I like to see the surprise in people’s faces (yes it’s usually there). No, I don’t subscribe to the normal desk or retail job scene. And, I even like to see the slight censure in other people’s faces before they ask, “and how’s that working for you?” I’m kind of an ass that way, I guess. I love a challenge and ;) I love to be contrary. In this way I think I’m opposite many of the folks who keep mum.

I can get away with this because I am a very hardworking and driven person. No one could accuse me of being lazy or too unmotivated to make my way in the real world. I also have a unique reason for being this way (yes I’m making an excuse for myself). I have two degrees in writing (a BFA in creative writing and an MA in Popular Fiction from respected schools). I consider that back-up enough for any scoffing I might get from the unsuspecting non-writer. I can make writing a novel sound as technical as dissecting a fugu. I can talk about the origins of my genre, and others; and the importance of various literary figures throughout the ages. And as the other Scribists can attest, I can take anyone to task on grammar and style applications.

Aside from my personal preferences, spilling the beans that I’m a writer should, by all logic, help my sales. If people know my name, I think that would motivate them to buy my book. I mean, if I know an author personally I sure as hell go buy their books. But seeing as I don’t yet have a book on sale, most of the time I get new email addresses to add to my “newsletter list.” It shows that people really are interested.

Because I don’t mind some funny looks, there are so few instances when telling people I’m a writer could have negative consequences. And it’s pretty easy to figure them out. So I say, why not open my mouth when I want to?


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Today in epublishing

Author/Writer Michael Levin blames the demise of the book on the book makers themselves, the New York Publishing Model.

The traditional New York publishing business model — publish a ton of books, fail to market most of them, and hope that somebody buys something — worked well when publishers had a hammerlock on the distribution and marketing of books. Publishers http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifessentially faced no competition and enjoyed complete control of what books people could publish and sell.

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Today in ePublishing

Amazon e-books Outsell Print

Ebook sales are on the rise! Some facts on ebooks from Amazon.

Good news for us Scribists :)

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Scrivener review

Scrivener is a text editor by Literature & Latte, geared towards writers and has quite an impressive number of features, but remains extremely easy to get started and continue to be very useful. It is a Mac only program at the moment, but there is a Windows version in the works.

The features I will focus on is the editing, document notes, outlining, exporting/printing. I won't be talking about how you can use it for scriptwriting, look at statistics and targets or its full screen modes. Frankly I never used those features, and in all honesty, I didn't much like the full screen views.

What I liked, actually loved, was that you could sit down and be writing your story within seconds of starting the program for the first time. I have used other programs that force you into a certain structure and wizards to create your world, characters, chapters, etc, etc, add nauseum. Not so with Scrivener. You start the program, choose a template or just a blank project, give it a filename, and Bob's your uncle. You are writing your next bestselling novel within seconds.

At the left side of the program is your binder. Think of it as a mini file system that consists of one or more documents (your story sections) and folders, which can contain additional sections or folders. It really helps keep things organized, but doesn't force a structure on you. Note that when you create a new project, it will create an untitled document for you. Automatic, easy to use.

On the right side is your Inspector, which can be used to keep notes on your current document.

It the middle is the actual document, where you can do all the regular stuff like change the font, add tables, and images. No matter how many features a program has, if the core purpose of the program isn’t any good, the whole experience goes out the window. Editing the document in this case, is top notch. It gives you a word and character count, lets you zoom the text in and out with a single keystroke (a huge feature for me). You can select your font face and size, spacing, tab settings. Much like you would a word processor. I didn't find working with tables to be much fun. They work seamlessly for the most part in MS Word, but in Scrivener, they were hard to work with.

So it's easy to get started, but what about keeping yourself going? Can Scrivener help you stay organized? I would have to answer yes, very much so.

Some writers can just sit down and use MS Word to type out their 100,000 word novel. Not me, I like to break things up. Scrivener will let you organize the story to whatever grain you like. If you want to break it into chapters, you can do that; then if you decide to break it down further, into scenes, you can do that to. In fact, you can even write out large pieces of your story, and when it gets too big to wrap your head around, with a single keystroke, you can break it into separate documents.

If you are the type of writer that prefers to use a bunch of index cards to outline your story before writing the meat of it, the corkboard view mode is your answer. It is a layout of index cards, each card had the title and synopsis you have written on it. You can arrange the events however you like by dragging the cards around. Your story will be organized under the covers. In other words, each section is tied to the index card.

The other fantastic feature I would like to touch on is the outliner mode. When your story grows to a very large size, you need to be able to keep track of what stage each of the scenes or chapters are at. The outliner will show all your documents in single row format. It will also show the synopsis if you have typed one. You can assign each row a status like, "To do", "First Draft", "Revised Draft", "Final Draft", "Done". You can also change those defaults to whatever you like.

Exporting is one of Scriveners strongest points. You can export in a number of formats including Word .doc and .docx, .pdf, .rtf, .txt, .html, epub (iPad), mobi (Kindle) and a host of others. You can have export change the font to something other then what you were editing in. You can have it change underlined text to italics or vice versa. You can assign a title page or generate a table of contents. It's just so flexible, letting you edit one way, and if you choose, make the final copy conform to a particular publishers manuscript format. For example, I like to type my story using double space courier font. I also like to underline for things that will output as italicized. The reason for that is it is easier to read and proof as I am writing the story. When I export to a final format, like PDF or epub, I want to use a nice looking font, and I want anything underlined to be converted to italics. Export does this for you, and much more.

All in all, a fantastic program. Great for both the beginner and experienced writers.

Pros:

• You are up and writing right away.
• No messing with clunky wizards, no forced structure.
• Very easy to create your own structure.
• Easy to outline and manage the state of your sections/chapters/scenes.

Cons:

• Autosave saves to your current document, which is an unsafe operation. It should save to a temporary file, and only save to the main file when you save manually.
• MS Word .doc export is really just an RTF file renamed. You need to pay attention when making edits/comments and re-saving the word file. I had a friend loose his changes, but might have been an Open Office oddity. Using MS Word to edit and save seemed to work fine.
• With such a wealth of options, it can be a little complex.
• Once I upgraded to version 2.0, my 5000 word story with a few notes attached to it started freezing up the program for several seconds at a time. This worries me since once I get to a story that is 100,000 words, and lots more notes, will it kill the performance of the app?
• You have to click each section you want to export, no keyboard shortcut. I'm a heavy keyboarder, and avoid the mouse whenever possible. Better on the wrists/hands/elbows.

Maria V. Snyder's Glass Series

I’ve just finished reading all of Maria V. Snyder’s Glass series. This includes, Storm Glass, Sea Glass and Spy Glass. Simply put, they are wonderful. I couldn’t put them down. That is part of the reason I’m reviewing the series and not each book. The other part of that reason is that each book picks right up where the previous left off, so it’s almost like one really long book.

In Storm Glass, we follow Opal, who we met toward the end of the Study books, through her last year at the Keep, that is at magic school. Except she’s an odd student with odd abilities and her education didn’t go smoothly, especially her last year. We hardly see her at school though. There is tons of action, tons of on-the-spot decision making, and characters that are easy to relate to. Opal is not the super hero that waltzes in and just saves everyone. She suffers, she sacrifices and she gets very upset by the things that happen to her. She also has to deal with the consequences of being a young person in an adult society.

The only unsatisfying thing for me about Storm Glass is the ending. (Mild Spoiler Alert) While the build up and action were great, it died for me after. Opal goes in, does her thing and just passes out. The others deal with the clean up, and I feel like I missed out on something, like she missed out on it. Sure it’s not important to her story, but by not seeing the payoff I almost feel like it didn’t happen.

Sea Glass sees Opal returning to school, only to have her story turned against her. Everything that happens to Opal always gets turned around on her. Her decisions are always questioned. But she is resolute to set things right. She gets closer to that in this book as she gets older and more experienced with the “joys” of the real world. Old enemies turn up, with more at stake and different agendas. Conflict twists around Opal and her abilities and reputation, constantly getting her into trouble. But she’s able to put smarts to use and depend on her trusted friends. This book did not let me down at all.

Spy Glass gives us a new Opal. She’s had so much happen to her in the first two books. This one shows how she recovers from the events up to now. She has a more hardened exterior, more smarts and knows a lot more about her enemies. But this still doesn’t make it easy for her. Her personal life is in a shambles and she’s working through the last few issues from all her previous exploits. But the way she tackles them now is the good result of all her previous trouble. I almost feel like a proud parent watching the ways she’s grown. (But I’m not a parent, and any parent in their right mind would never put their children through these things.)

Another thing I can laud about the book is introduction of “really cool stuff.” She shows us the processes of glassmaking as only someone who’s done it can, and not too many people have. She talks about diamonds and other gemstones (my other passion) with authority. This book is not the first time people have blackmarketed diamonds to fund a war. So bonus points for working in modern issues. Snyder has done her homework. And some things, like all the spy work, I really wonder how she describes it so well? Has she done some of that, or is that just the skill of her writing at hand?

This entry is cross posted at Wandering Around the Words.

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iA Writer review

iA Writer is a text editor for the iPad that boasts distraction free writing. After using it for a week, I find that it isn't so much the distraction free writing that makes this program well suited for writers, it's the helpful additions to a plain text editor.

My feelings on writing fiction on the iPad are mixed. While the iPad provides one of the most portable devices with a built in keyboard, it does fall short on one key point. Yes, it's the keyboard. But not for the reason you might think. The virtual keyboard actually works really well. I find my fingers fly just as effortlessly over the virtual keyboard as they do over the keys of my laptop. I do make a lot more mistakes, but the autocorrect fixes most of them as I type. So what _is_ wrong with the keyboard if, not the typing?

Navigation. On the virtual keyboard, you dont have any arrows. You also don't have a home, end, page up or page down keys. Why is this a problem? Well take for instance the word "dont" above. I noticed the typo a sentence after I typed it. To fix it, I would normally have to stop what I was doing, press and hold my finger on the screen at the location I need to insert the apostrophe, slide it around till I find the right location, then hope the position doesn't change when I lift my finger up. All too often it takes several seconds to make a correction that should only take a fraction of that time. Talk about a distraction!

Enter iA Writer. It has arrows so you can navigate around your text. This I believe is the single most important feature iA Writer has to offer. It places the arrows, and a few other common punctuation marks on a bar just above the regular keyboard. It looks like it should have been there the whole time! There are left/right and word left/right arrows (like holding Control-Left/right). This feature alone, makes it worth the purchase if you plan to actually do some heavy writing (and not pull your hair out while typing.)

Strange as it may seem, they also like to promote the font they use. If you are going to be staring at text for long periods of time, it has to be clear, easy to read, and nice to look at. They used a font called Nitti Light, which accomplishes the task wonderfully. It is a beautiful font. It isn’t quite as sharp in portrait mode however, but still is easy on the eyes.

The last feature worth mentioning is called FocusMode. Your mileage may very, but I didn't find it particularly useful. The feature gets rid of the toolbar and grays out all text except for the three lines closest to what you are working on, forcing you to focus and providing a distraction free environment. Yeah right. If you are easily distracted, graying out a few lines of text is not going to get the creative juices flowing again. I do like the concept, but it also turns off auto correction, and the red mis-spelling highlighting. Two features I find I can't live without, especially on a virtual keyboard were my typing error rate is so much higher. For example, normally the iPad will replace a lower case "i" with an uppercase one when you mean to say "I". In focus mode it no longer does that. Maybe that mode would be more useful to someone using an external keyboard. But when I use the iPad, I usually only use the virtual keyboard.

Although there are a lot of features that are missing, I like the app and would recommend it to other writers. A few items I hope get addressed in the near future would include:

1. Toss out the word arrow sound fx. When I turn off the keyboard clicking sound, I don't want to listen to swiping sounds when you use those keys.

2. Up and down arrows would be very helpful. Maybe even home and end.

3. iA Writer saves plain text files, but uses UTF16 encoding. That file encoding is not widely recognized by other text editor apps, either on the iPad, Mac or PC. This makes it difficult when trying to integrate with other programs. In this case, Scrivener 2.0. Note that if the file was created by another program, and you edit it in iA Writer, it will re-save it with the correct encoding.

4. Dropbox integration really needs to support directories. For me to use Scrivener synching I had to use a symlink and point my Writer directory to my Draft folder that Scrivener exports to. It would actually have been helpful for Scrivener not to force the export to the Draft folder as well.

Having Folder support would also allow me to work on more then one story at a time, as well as use it as a general text editor, which I can't really do when I am syncing with Scrivener.

Pros:

- Additional virtual keys available all the time, allowing you to navigate your text using left/right arrow keys.

- Very good font choice.

Cons:

-No directory support for drop box, making it hard to use the app for more then one project at a time.

-Files are not sorted alphabetically, so you can't even using a number naming scheme to make chapters appear in the correct order.

-Keyboard sounds when you have turned key clicks off.

-UTF16 encoding isn't very well supported by other programs.